No, this isn’t an epiphany my protagonist had. It’s an epiphany I had about my protagonist. Which, now that I think about it, might enable my protagonist to have her own epiphany.

I’m well over 20,000 words into my “new” (haha) first draft. (It’s almost a total rewrite and re-plotting of a previous “first draft”.) My protagonist up until now hasn’t really had a clearly defined character arc. She’s basically been an ordinary, nice person, thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Those intense, life-altering events bring out her inner character and show what she’s really made of, and she perhaps is stronger because of it, but she doesn’t really have a dramatic character arc of her own.

And that’s not such a bad thing. Many fine novels have characters that don’t change much. But I’ve always felt a good story can be made richer with a realistic, dramatic character arc. It’s something you can’t force. It has to grow organically out of the story. At least for me it does. I have to follow her around, writing down what she does, until I “get” her. Quirks and all.

Today, I “got” her. She’s still basically a nice person from the start, but she’s got some growing to do if she’s to end up happy. Well, as happy as she can be after all the trouble I throw her way.

I’ve seen a discussion of character arc presented in many different forms, some more complicated than others, but my favorite is based on Michael Hauge’s brilliant lecture from The Hero’s 2 Journeys.

This is psychology 101, but the gist is that your hero has a wound. It can be a specific traumatic event in the past, or a period of time in their past that did some damage. They then build up armor to protect themselves from suffering that wound, either the past one or anew. Their armor is their outward personality they’ve built up to control and deal with the world. It’s based on fear of suffering the wound again. And the armor generally works. It protects them. But it also prevents them from living in their essence, or who they are beneath all the armor. And it’s difficult to love and be happy if you’re not living your essence.

So, character growth is about someone learning to go beyond their armor and live in their essence. That’s typically not a pleasant process, nor a process one undertakes voluntarily.

And speaking of epiphanies, you can’t just throw in an “Aha!” moment and have your character change. You’ll lose your audience. There must be a continual struggle, back and forth throughout the story, a glimpse of essence, falling back into armor, a greater glimpse, retreating back, and on it goes. Then the change, which may not be complete, will be much more believable.

If you want to get deeper into this, check out Michael Hauge’s work. He’s a master at the craft.

As I write this, I’m 24% into draft one.

I have a bit of work to do on my next draft to weave in my protagonist’s character arc up to this point, but it’s very exciting.